My Rankings of the Warbands

[Keith]

Just from my experience and just my opinion.

Here is how I rate the Warbands in terms of effectiveness.

1) Ironskulls Boyz ( easy for beginners to pick up and play and very tough in the hands of an experienced players, can play aggressive and objectives.)

2) Sepulchral Guard ( Not easy for beginners , but experienced players can play objectives and can surprisingly effective at the fighting game)

3) Steelhearts Stormcasts ( Easy for beginners , and can power up , but struggle vs numbers , they cant be everywhere)

4) Garreks Reavers ( Great fun , and my favourites , but I don't seem to win much with them)

 

How do you rate them ?

Tell me I'm crazy and don't know what I'm talking about

Should Garrek's boys be number one ?

 

[Bademeister]

i have not played that much. maybe 20 games or something. 

If i should rate the warband, i maybe would do it the same as Keith did, but i would look at the different playstyles and seperate them. Aggresive, Defensive,  Easy for Beginners, etc.

But if is just took a rough look at the warband i would say that Ironskulls, Stormcasts and Sepulchral are nearly equal and Reavers are a bit worse.

[Killax]

I like all ratings but I dont think it matters much because we don't have all cards and Warbands to put it into context. What I can say is the following:

Sepulchral Guard are not difficult to play with Hold Objective based Objective decks the moment you have 3 Objective tokens on your side of the board. The gameplan becomes simple and very efficient, defend your own territory and as a result not be hindered by movement 2. What is key for the Guard to stick around is the Warden though. If opponents are capable of thaking him out of action round 1 or early round 2 your in big trouble. It's because of this that the only difficult part for them is playing offensively as it requires the Warden to move out which in turn puts him into charge ranges of more and more models. For me personally objective play with them is my clear favourite, they are very hard to beat with 3 Objective tokens on their side.

Stormcast are somewhat more tactical as most Warbands because you have fewer models and need to know which model counters one of your opponent's models. Having that information though does mean that you can functionally play them well. The only real mistake one can make with them is charge a lot or charge out of range of other supportive models. Luckily with Illusory Fighter and Parry you can play more and more aggressively with them. The cool thing is that they play defensively and offensively well enough but do not have a clear favourite.

Ironskull Boyz are indeed quite easy to play if your more experienced with a go-getter army system like Age of Sigmar. Going offensive has it's downsides though and for them this means that a Round 1 with minimal combat puts them on a backfoot. Because of their offensive ploys and upgrades Orruks play much better melee driven as objective driven. In my experience I'd even say that going for objective play with them is close to impossible to get a nice result. For me personally playing with them melee driven has yielded some awesome results. Their downside (morso as Stormcast) is their movement 3, long boards can be tricky for them to use well very fast.

Lastly we have Bloodreavers who like Stormcast can also fill in both roles well. I personally would indeed now rank them last and Sepulchral Guard first but having said that they are also the best counter to Sepulchral Guard because their movement allows them to reach the Warden quickly and they have the tools to deal with him efficiently fast aswell. They have decent game against Orruks but do fold if they go as melee driven as them. So far my worst results with this Warband have been against Stormcast, prime reason remains that there is little to no reliable Cleave available to the Warband. This can obviously change in the future if we have Universal Cleave upgrades.

So I'd say Orruks and Stormcast are the most forgiving, followed by Sepulchral Guard with Objective play (which does have the most consistent stream of Glory income, no dice required) followed by Reavers who can punish mistakes really well but are extremely squishy too.

[Keith]

Good Summary Killax

We await the new warbands and cards that will mix it up a bit.

 

[Wallack]

I think with the cards we have today ironjawz are pretty strong being able to do three charges in a turn with a normal charge, time trap and leadin with the example (or however is called) which can be devastating. If you combine it with dangerous terrain to be inspired on the charge it can be a pretty nice hit on the table early on (if you have the three cards). You could build your deck and aggressively mulligan for those but is just a theory.

[Killax]

35 minutes ago, Wallack said:

I think with the cards we have today ironjawz are pretty strong being able to do three charges in a turn with a normal charge, time trap and leadin with the example (or however is called) which can be devastating. If you combine it with dangerous terrain to be inspired on the charge it can be a pretty nice hit on the table early on (if you have the three cards). You could build your deck and aggressively mulligan for those but is just a theory.

Works out allright. Though you often don't have to mulligan specifically towards those cards. Orruks have a ton of great Ploys just by themselves. As you said, we have Shattering Terrain, KbB, BbK and many more. 

A key card for Orruks in general for me has become Sprint, as their aggressive design doesn't really care for a model being hit first. In fact it's actually good if opponents start to focus on Hakka and Basha. What is much more important (for several of their Ploys and Objectives) is that others are near. One of the most succesful ways for me to win against Orruks has been to be able to ignore Hakka and Basha and first focus on Gurzag and Bonekutta. Sprint changes that drastically as both Hakka and Basha will provide additional support and charging offense if it's required.

The prime reason as to why I still rate Orruks slightly under Stormcast is also their aggressive nature. A Distraction/Peal of Thunder/Terrifying Screams can really mess up their Round 1 and Orruks without Upgrades after Round 1 are often quickly done for. Their income is very melee driven and each fail there costs them more as with other Warbands due to the nature of hurting yourself  

[Dave Fraser]

my rankings of the warbands:

1. Stormcasts in the hands of an experienced player with a deck tailored to their strategy

1. Skellys in the hands of an experienced player with a deck tailored to their strategy

1. Orruks in the hands of an experienced player with a deck tailored to their strategy

1. Blood Reavers in the hands of an experienced player with a deck tailored to their strategy.

5. less optimal decks and less experienced players.

 

There is a degree of Rock/Paper/Scissors that can appear to come into effect between the different factions but I don't genuinely think that the balance of the factions released to date are sufficiently far apart as to be able to sensibly rank them.

More important are other factors like:

• Player playstyle
• Set up of the board & objectives
• Deck Design
• Ability to read opponents strategy
• Ability to react to the table state
• Player skill
• Opponent skill

Equally I don't think that any 1 faction can be considered easy to use compared to the others. eg Skellys have the bodies to swarm the table for objectives but against an opponent with the right setup that simply doesn't matter and they are painfully slow, so if you do miss what your opponent is up to then reacting will be very difficult.

Stormcast - low model count & slow means objective play and denial play can really stop them scoring.

Orruks- superficially easy because they want to run forward and try to kill people to trigger most of what they do, but if your opponent denies you that do they have the fallback strategy to cope?

I'm sure as the game grows bigger there will start to be some unexpected combos that break how GW expected the forces to play that could lead to a meaningful ranking becoming a think but I've not seen it as yet.

[Inquisitor Moloko]

Personally, I'd love to see content that specifically speaks to the points you've mentioned EXCLUDING deck design. I get that it's an important factor to create decks that work with your warband towards the goal of scoring Glory, but it feels like the emphasis right now is on having the right cards in your deck and drawing them when you need them. I think that creates a very narrow focus and does a disservice to the depth that this game offers. Long term, more of us are going to need help with learning how to set up boards, objectives, and deployment than deckbuilding. 

[Killax]

@Inquisitor Moloko well you can't really do any logical tactic build up without deck design. As before without knowing your Objective cards the only goal is to go for melee and for several Warbands that route is either not as good as an option as for others or simply working into the advantage of a specific Warband's Power cards.

The emphasis for me personally isn't to have the right cards in your deck, the empahsis is understanding still what the right cards are and do for your Objectives. As mentioned before, a universal top 3 could easily be Illusory Fighter, Time Trap and Mighty Swing. Understanding why I favour these much more over say other good cards like Distraction, Confusion and Shardfall comes from playing the game. Board control is good but not as good as essentially handing out free Actions. As discussed previously, the game has much more Actions as Activations and the only way to realize that is by looking into your Power deck. 

Set up of boards, objectives and deployment are absolutely key factors in the game but because Illusory Fighter, Time Trap and Mighty Swing excist there is no extremely good or bad set up. What there are is general set ups that work well for each Warband in multiple scenario's but again only if other cards are included in the Power deck to support such plans. Making plans without cards is also the best route to go because each round you have a hand filled with 5, all games that snowballed quickly into a win for me where the hands I was able to play out per Round, the game works this way because you actively get rewarded by playing cards. These rewards ultimately lead to Glory as they directly boost your movement or offense which leads to Holding Objectives or thaking enemy fighters out of action with increased likelyness.

In terms of what @Dave Fraser mentioned I think there are interesting aspects to cover and also highlight why knowing cards matter so much.
- Player playstyle is important but still dependant on the Objectives the player chose. Going aggressive while you have Objectives focused on holding Objectives generally speaking snowballs into anti-synergy very quick. It's also why Bloodreavers are arguably the hardest to get great results out of. They have the movement to go melee or objectives but their damage output is average and their own survival is below average. It wasn't until On Your Feet, Mighty Swing, Illusory Fighter and Time Trap that I felt comfortable with going a more aggressive route. 
- Set up of boards is very important but ultimately knowing your Objectives and Power cards again matters a lot. You can and likely should go long with Bloodreavers and create chockes with Stormcasts because A. you now have hexes connecting equal as you have fighters and B. Denial and Containment are incredibly good end game plans and you will have them if you want to (see mulligan).
- Deck design, reading strategies, reading tables, reading skill all boils down to knowing which cards could potentially lead to an advantage or disadvantage and considering a counter strategy for the moment you see it occuring. E.g. if an opponent purposefully deploys very much backwards it's almost certain an Illusory Fighter card will be around. If you have the option to bait that with a non-key model do so before rushing in with say Gurzag or Steelheart.

Lastly cards will not win you the game, but knowing what they do at a given moment eventually does. It creates a patron of possible move sets and being able to preform those movesets between round 1 to 3 can assure you the win for the game. 

Cheers,

[zabbraxas]

Some ranking on my own,

Easyest to make a deck

1. Orc  - You can make a deck full with orc only card and win.
2. Bloodreavers - You have to make it offensive it's hard to miss the point.
3. Stormcast - Some  choice must be made but if you want to play defensive or agressive but that's all.
4. Sepulcral guard - A little window of key card you see in all deck and after that you're on your own.

Easyest to play for a beginner

 

1. Stormcast - Tough, pretty oblivious objective card so you know what you have to do, hit like a truck.
2. Orc - Pretty much the same with an extra guy witch it's nice but with less kill power.
3. Bloodreavers -  Very unusual way to play, but quick and expandable you gonna have a good time even if you lose.
4. Sepulcral guard - A lot of model, verry slow, to much choice for a beginner.

Deadliest in good hand

1. Bloodreavers - Basicly you can win by loosing all you guy and there is nothing you can do to prevent that, in addition the mobility is verry powerfull in shadespire and this guy are the fastest.
2. Sepulcral guard - A lot of model, verry powerfull character if you're good to swarm your opponent you can wipe all his band, you lose yours in the process but who care yours come back.
3. Orc - The middle guy they got a lot of easy objective you basicly just have to survive the first round, but on the other side your opponent know exactly what you doing and can deny you.
4. Stormcast - Verry forgiving band but with a little lack of high value objective card so you need a good hand and a little luck to really shine.

[Sleboda]

With the assumption we are talking about competitive play (the emphasis of the game, after all) and 1 on 1, these are my rankings (subject to change as I play more with Reavers) -

 

#1 Ironskulls. 4 wounds each minimum, Shields, Medium speed. Super achievable Inspire conditions (the only warband that can choose to "inflict" it's own Inspiration with no dice or input from the opponent). Easy Glory conditions that play into their designed styles. Awesome Orruk-only Power Cards.

#2 Steelhearts. High wounds, shields, easy to inspire (even if cleave hits them, rolling shields still inspires), 2 (two!) Defense dice after Inspire. Can play the game without ever having to swing a weapon and still get Glory in large amounts.

#3 Reavers.  High movement and better than average model count - can play kill or objective style and deny/gain objectives based on position better than others.  A bit weak on hitting and surviving, but Khorne cares not ...

#4 Guard. High model count and able to come back from death stronger than before.  Excellent at objective style. The ability of the opponent to eeeeeeasily derail objective play keeps them from scoring Glory combos and renders them a poor choice for standard GW Grand Clash tournament structure.  Inspire only happens at the mercy of your opponent's choices.  Basically, when you win with them,  it's because your opponent let you (usually).

[Red_Zeke]

Seems solid @Sleboda. Those SC have been a super tough nut to crack if they get the chance to place the boards lengthwise and have the defensive objective build.

[Bone Shrapnel]

I agree with Sleboda's assessment though player skill  goes a long way in this game. I've mowed through some players with Steelheart's but there's a couple Reavers players I know that are very, very, good with them. Earlier on I was convinced of Steelheart's supremacy but I don't think that's the case now.

[Killax]

Skill makes most of the games, understanding when to thake risks understanding the many potential routes to go to win a game. As before I feel all Warbands have a specific pro and con versus specific Warbands. None of the four Ive played so far have been much more or much less rewarding. In many cases I have seen the defeat of players who played as aggressively into Orruks as Orruks can play agressively or Sepulchral Guard players winning on Objectives because opponents tried to do the same.

So far Shadespire seems to be designed with this balance principle in mind and where one Warband is top in one particular area lacks in others. 

Cheers,